Technical Field
The present invention relates to an indicator and, more particularly, to an indicator using a light-emitting diode (LED) as a light source.
Related Art
Various electric appliances have hitherto been equipped with indicators using LEDs as light sources. The indicator has been required to be superior in design, particularly in recent years, in view of an emphasis on design as well as to enable the user to be able to clearly view lighting/extinction.
JP 2011-60706 A relates to a liquid-crystal display device and describes lighting equipment including: an LED light source; a light-shielding barrier; and a lens-shaped structure which is disposed on the barrier to cover a light-emitting region partitioned by the barrier. The lens-shaped structure is stated as being a pyramidal lens which has a curved slope and a bottom surface identical in shape with an opening of the light-emitting region and which projects toward a LED substrate. The lens-shaped structure changes an advancing direction of the light, which originates from the light source and enters the lens-shaped structure, such that an angle between the advancing direction and the direction of the normal to an LED substrate becomes smaller. This makes it possible to inhibit the halo effect, which would otherwise arise from a boundary between a bright area and a dark area in an image.
In the related art, the halo effect is prevented by uniformly illuminating the opening of a light-emitting region. However, in the related-art, no consideration is paid to local illumination of a portion of the opening of the light-emitting region. For instance, it is possible to make a feature of an advanced design manifest by giving a specific shape; for instance, a rectangular shape, to the opening of the lighting-emitting region and locally illuminating only a center portion of the opening. Such a consideration is also not taken into account. In the related art, the lens-shaped structure assumes a pyramidal shape and complicate in which the slope of the structure is a curve and in which the bottom surface of the same is identical in shape with the opening of the light-emitting region. An indicator with a superior design is desired to be obtained in a simpler configuration.
The present invention provides an indicator with a characteristic of superior design in simple configuration and at suppressed cost increase.